“Fifty years ago we had no separate prison for women, no State reformatory for young offenders, no State asylum for insane convicts, and persons untried because insane; and no State asylum for placing reformed young offenders in private families. The next year after my report, a first step was taken towards State control by the creation of a State Workhouse at Bridgewater. This, which is now called the State Farm, contains at present more than a third part as many convicts as were in all the county prisons in 1864-5--only 6,563 in all. Adding to the Bridgewater prisoners the 800 insane convicts held in custody there, the total to-day is more than half the number in all the county prisons in March, 1865. The Women’s Prison at Sherborn, with its hundreds, the Concord Reformatory and the Shirley branch, with their 1,000 inmates, and the reformed young offenders now living under State authority in families and other convicts under State authority elsewhere, would add for an aggregate more than the 6,563 who were in the county prisons fifty years ago. To that extent the State has exercised its right of eminent domain over prisoners. “But there still remain in the county prisons and the few county reformatories about 4,000 permanent or average prisoners--most of them convicts--whose proper classification is impossible, even in the larger counties, and practically out of the question in the middle-sized and small counties. And this average population of some twenty-five establishments represents not less than 30,000 different persons during the year, whose separation and proper care cannot be provided for in these twenty-five prisons, etc., some of which are always crowded, others usually empty or half filled, and all under a varying, partial, costly and practically useless prison discipline. State control would give all but a few hundred of the 30,000 comers and goers a safe, judicious and to a good extent reformatory discipline, now quite uncertain or impossible as things are.